Heinkel III German bomber.
An unusual one this, a piece from the wreckage of a Heinkel III German bomber. The Heinkel’s were the mainstay of the German bomber squadrons during the Blitz and several crash landed in the Irish Free State, resulting in their crews being interned in the Curragh. Some German bombers did not survive such crashes, and a number of men found their final resting place in the German war cemetery in Glencree.
This piece was salvaged in 1944 at Baldonnell Airdrome by a young Irish army officer and remains in the possession of his family. It was loaned to my father for a project he is working on, in relation to the 70th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz in April.
The piece comes from the planes fuselage and has markings which indicate that it was part of the housing of one of the planes M.G 15 machine guns.
German Kampfgeschwader (A unit of the Luftwaffe) flying out of airfields in France and the low countries carried out the raids over southern and western England and Ireland. The attacks on Belfast on April 15 and May 5 inflicted huge casualties and according to Luftwaffe records involved up to 180 aircraft. Dublin was bombed too, not just at North Strand but also at Dolphin’s Barn and the South Circular Road. More information on the the lesser known Dolphin’s Barn and South Circular Road bombings can be found in Eoin C. Bairéad’s The Bombing of Dolphin’s Barn, Dublin, 1941. This work has only just been released as part of the Maynooth Studies in Local History series.
North Strand, Dublin
The Belfast blitz brought about an incredible act of solidarity when southern fire engines crossed the border to provide much needed assistance to the people of Belfast, devestated by the fascist bombings.
Belfast, 1941.
On a sidenote, and something likely to interest many Come Here To Me readers, Heinkel would go on to produce scooters, which became very fashionable among Mods!
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Very interesting piece. I would highly recommend that anyone interested in the history of the Allied and German internees in Ireland read the book ‘Guests of the State’ by T. Ryle Dwyer.
This was also the subject of a proposed drama series that Dermot Morgan was working on before his untimely death. We had several meetings with the then BBC Head of Drama who was very keen on the idea (which was to have been co-written by Barry Devlin).
Unfortunately, it was not to be. Dermot’s death and a change of BBC personnel resulted in the series not being put into production.
There was a Luftwaffe pilot called Lorenzen who crashed here during the war and was interned. After his release he opted to stay in Ireland. He established a butchers shop in Navan and his sausages gained what can be described as cult status. They were an irish style sausage with a secret ingredient, a German twist, that he later passed on to two brothers called Walsh who worked for him as he had no children of his own. When I was a kid there would be queues outside Lorenzen’s on Saturday with people lining up for their fix. When ex-pats returned to the Navan area they’d be expecting a fry with Lorenzen’s sausages on their return. Eventually people were coming from all over the county and beyond to buy the sausages. The shop closed sometime in the last decade and the Walsh brother who actually had the recipe retired. The son of the other brother is now producing a sausage called Lorenzo’s which I’m told (I’m a veggie now so I can’t verify) is a pale comparison on the original.
totaly wrong story, lorenzen came to ireland with 5 frends and to help eachother to start up their own buisnesses, i welcome you to come and sample my sausages , times change and shopping centres arrive , location location is the key , i have been passed on the yes you can still get the lorenzen sausage in 2011 in charlie walshes butchers in navan
Apart from the scooters, don’t forget this little beauty which I remember on the streets of Dublin in my youth. Never understood why it didn’t catch on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_Kabine
On an even slightly lighter note:
http://www.photopol.com/frolics/luft.html
Looking forward to reading Eoin Bairéad’s Dolphin’s Barn publication.
My da remembers as a boy in Belfast, standing in the garden with his father on the first night of the blitz, seeing a parachute coming down . At first they thought it was paratroops but it turned out to be what was known as a “parachute mine”. It was probably aimed at the match factory across the road from them on Donegall Road, but landed among houses in Beechmount, just up the road.
Air-raid precautions weren’t what they might have been. The night of the second raid, him and his da went round to his aunties around the corner. There wasn’t room for everyone in the cupboard under the stairs so him and his cousin were each put in a drawer in a very large chest that his auntie had.
In Milltown Cemetery, unidentified victims of the bombing raids are buried together:
The piece of fuselage isn’t a mounting part for the machine gun. It was for the bag that was used to hold spent drum magazines off the guns. The full title is “Halterung für Bordtasche” which means “mounting for travelbag”